Saturday, 30th of November 2024 at 19 o’clock

With The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, Luxembourg Ballet invites you to one of the most touching Advent classics in Vianden Castle.

The neighbors’ children Kai and Gerda are best friends who find a refuge to play and dream under the rose boxes of two modest attic apartments.

In the guise of a troll, the devil creates a magic mirror that makes the beautiful appear ugly and the ugly appear beautiful. The troll’s servants carry the mirror all over the world to distort everything and seek to mock God and the angels with it. But as they approach heaven, the mirror falls and shatters into thousands of splinters.

Kai is hit in the heart and eye by two splinters. His heart turns into a lump of ice and his vision distorts everything beautiful into ugly. He becomes a cruel boy, tears off the roses and mocks Gerda.

One day, Kai is kidnapped by the Snow Queen, who lives in a world of ice and snow. But Gerda is determined to save him. The memory of the roses keeps her love glowing and helps her overcome all dangers on her way, even when she is trapped in carelessness and attacked by robbers. This power, which astonishes even mystical figures on her way, takes her to the Snow Queen’s castle, where Kai tries in vain to lay the word “eternity” out of ice blocks in order to regain his freedom. But the splinter of glass that distorts his clear vision causes him to fail again and again, making all of his design patterns appear more beautiful and more important than “eternity”. Gerda bursts into tears that melt Kai’s icy heart. Kai responds with tears, which heals his eye from the second splinter. Now the word “eternity” appears by itself and Kai is free. When they arrive at the old place of refuge, they are already adults.

The Snow Queen is not just a fairy tale that, as is typical for Hans Christian Andersen, moves one to tears. It is an ode to what gives meaning to life. An ode to what heals us from the blindness of arrogance, liberates us from the temptation of indifference and protects us from cold-heartedness. Again and again we need the enlightenment that there is a world that is not distorted. There is a Kai and a Gerda in each of us; a distorted everyday life and a contemplative break that makes our hearts beat faster and moves us to tears so that we can see clearly again. There is no more beautiful place for such a break than Vianden Castle. Join us and our star ensemble on a heart-rending journey through time into “eternity”.

Music:

• Camille Saint-Saëns
• Jean Sibelius
• Edvard Grieg
• Robert Schumann
• Frédéric Chopin
• Johannes Brahms

Choreographie und Regie:

Volha Kastsel

Featuring world-renowned ballet celebrities and young talents from the Ecole de musique de l’Union Grand-Duc Adolphe

 Tickets: https://fienta.com/snowqueen